by Lauren Carr
“But you took care of us before those evil people killed Mommy.”
“Yes, I did,” Chris said. “She was supposed to come back home after she’d finished her job in Germany. But then, she—” A cold breeze sent a shiver down his spine. “The French authorities caught up with the actual bad guy and his friends who’d killed your mother and a lot of other innocent people. I worked for the FBI. Do you know what that is?”
She nodded her head. “You were a fed.”
“Yes, I was a fed. And my job was to investigate crimes and catch bad guys here in the United States.”
“Did you catch bad guys like the kind who killed Mommy?”
“Sometimes, yes. But then after Gramps died and Nonni was left here on this big farm by herself, she and I thought that we could help each other. So I retired and moved you girls back here. I help Nonni run the farm and she helps me take care of you and your sisters.”
“And Katelyn, Nikki, and I can all have ponies!” Emma said with a grin.
Pleased to see her bright smile again, Chris stood up and took her hand. “Yes, you can.”
“And we have a swimming pool! Can I have a pool party, Daddy?” Emma hopped with excitement.
A moment ago, she was sad about losing her mother, and now she’s talking about a party. In the back of his mind, Chris suspected he got played by a little girl. “An ice storm is coming.”
“They already closed the schools for tomorrow. That means all of my friends will be free to come to my pool party.” She ran on ahead. “I’m going to go send out an email to invite them!”
At the farmhouse, the lane snaked along the outer edge of the side yard and back to the barnyard. One outbuilding housed the tractor and other farm vehicles. Beyond that was the barn for the horses and numerous cats.
Somehow, word had spread that the Matheson farm was the place to drop off homeless cats, which were invaluable in keeping the rodent population down. Chris’s mother, Doris made a point of having each new cat spayed to reduce unwanted litters. Still, every year there was at least one litter of kittens born in their barn.
A master carpenter, Chris’s father had constructed a built-in wooden cabinet that took up the length of one wall in the mud room in which to hang coats, hats, scarves, and other outer gear. It contained hooks, drawers, boxes, and even a space for dog bowls.
The century old farmhouse had recently undergone renovations. The modernized kitchen included a breakfast nook, formal dining room, and enclosed sun porch, in which Sadie and Mocha liked to sleep on the furniture.
The in-ground pool, closed for winter, rested on the opposite side of the patio. From their beds, Sadie and Mocha watched the happenings among an assortment of bird feeders that Chris’s mother had erected in the back yard. They weren’t the only ones viewing the birds. Thor spent most of her day bird watching.
Chris’s late wife had given their daughters a baby rabbit, a French Lop bunny, as an Easter present before moving overseas for an assignment with the Department of State. The tan and white rabbit with long floppy ears had grown into a fifteen-pound furry bundle.
His daughters had selected three different names for the rabbit and Chris pulled the winning one out of a hat.
Thor was the winner.
It didn’t matter that the bunny was a female with a pink rhinestone harness. Nikki’s choice had won. So, the cuddly rabbit, who was usually dressed in frilly doggie clothes, was named Thor.
The scent of brownies warmed up in the microwave wafted into the mudroom where Chris removed his riding boots and put on his slippers. After hanging up Emma’s discarded coat, hat, and gloves, he went into the kitchen where his thirteen-year-old daughter, Katelyn, was perched on a stool at the kitchen counter. She munched on a brownie with a glass of milk while reading a book on her computer tablet.
Chris greeted her with a kiss on the forehead on his way to the platter of warm brownies. “I didn’t see the bus drop you off. Did Alison’s mom give you a ride?”
“Yeah.” Katelyn glanced in his direction.
Concluding that there had been a development in an ongoing drama, the center of which being a thirteen-year-old boy named Zack Daniels, Chris opted to say nothing.
She watched his back while he poured a glass of milk to go with his brownie.
Katelyn had inherited his fair coloring—from his steel gray eyes to his light auburn hair. Chris had been in his mid-twenties when his hair gradually turned silver at the temples. By the age of forty-six, his hair was an equal mixture of silver and brown curls.
While he drank his glass of milk, Chris saw Katelyn’s eyes darting from the tablet to the cupboard behind him and across the room. She couldn’t look him in the eye. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She bit into her brownie and squinted at the screen on her tablet.
“What happened at school today?”
“Nothing happened.”
Chris let out a deep sigh. “How’s Zack?”
Katelyn swallowed and set down the tablet.
“What happened with Tara?”
“She’s a bitch,” Katelyn said. “That’s what happened.”
Chris tried not to roll his eyes over yet another drama between Katelyn and her arch rival, Tara. The war had been ongoing since October. Both eighth graders were pursuing the same boy. Bouncing between the two of them like a tennis ball, Zack enjoyed the attention of two girls fighting over him way too much. The boy wasn’t worthy of either of them.
“What’d Tara do this time?” Chris asked with a heavy sigh before taking another sip of his milk.
“She told everyone that you’re a perv.”
This got Chris’s full attention.
“She said you raped a teenaged girl when you were in college and got her pregnant. Then you killed her and that’s why you ran away to join the FBI.”
“What the—”
“It was some girl named Sandy.”
Chris felt as if his soul had been ripped out of his body to take him back to another time and place—to when the nightmare had begun.
Sensing that something was up, Sadie and Mocha stopped surveilling a family of squirrels invading the bird feeders to turn their attention to the scene brewing in the kitchen. Their eyes were wide like orbs.
Thor was more interested in the carrot that Emma had given her before racing to the study to email her friends.
“It’s not true. Right, Dad?”
“What’s Tara’s last name?” Chris asked in a soft voice.
“Sinclair,” Katelyn said. “Her mom is some big wig on the county commission. Her dad is—”
“Victor Sinclair,” Chris said.
“He’s the county prosecutor.”
“I know. I know them all very well.”
“You didn’t do what they say you did, did you, Dad?” Katelyn stared up at him.
“No!” Chris slammed the glass down so hard onto the counter that the milk inside splashed over the rim. “How can you even ask me that? You know me. You’ve seen me with your friends. What makes you think I’d take advantage of a young girl like that?”
Katelyn’s eyes were wide with fear.
“Do you really think that I’m that warped?” Chris demanded an answer.
She sobbed.
The sight of her tears broke Chris’s heart. “I’m sorry.” He went around the counter to take her into his arms. Refusing to let him touch her, she raced up the back staircase to her room. The last word in the conversation was the slam of her bedroom door.
Grief, frustration, and anger from the last twenty months built up inside him. If he didn’t do something, he would explode. Desperate for some way to release the pressure, he turned around in circles.
With a deep roar, Chris grabbed his glass of milk and hurled it at the wall. The glass shattered. Milk splattered all over the flo
or, much to Sadie’s and Mocha’s delight.
Chapter Two
“How is he?” Elliott Prescott dared to take his eyes off the road to glance over his shoulder at the passengers in the back seat of his SUV.
Doris Matheson smiled over at the German shepherd resting his head on top of the seat. The sedative the vet had given him was wearing off. His nose twitched while he took in the many scents of his new surroundings. She rubbed his shoulder. “He’s perking up a bit.”
“That may not be a good thing.” Elliott stopped at the intersection marking the turnoff into Harpers Ferry, nestled in the fork of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. “They drugged him because he tried to eat my face.”
“I’m sure you deserved it,” Doris said in a chirpy tone. The dog’s fur was growing back from surgery he had received only eleven days earlier. The police canine had taken two bullets to the chest. He was lucky. His handler wasn’t.
“Why do you assume I deserved it?” Elliott pressed his foot to the accelerator after the light turned green.
“Because no one with a face like Sterling’s would do that to someone who didn’t.”
The crow’s feet around Elliott’s eyes deepened as he squinted back over his shoulder to where the sable, two-year-old German shepherd was eyeing him. His thick salt and pepper eyebrows furrowed.
“I think you and Christopher are meant to be together,” she told the dog. “Winston died on the same day you lost your partner and your home and your job. You need each other to heal.”
“Are you sure Chris is ready for another dog?” Elliott asked. “It isn’t like you don’t have enough critters on that farm for him to bond with. What about Thor?”
“Thor can’t go out on trail rides.”
“True.”
“Christopher had Winston longer than he had Blair.” She muttered, “And Winston was more loyal, too.”
Elliott’s ears perked up. “What did you say?” He peered at her reflection through the rearview mirror.
“Nothing.” Her thick blond hair framed her lovely face. At sixty-five, Doris Matheson exuded a timeless beauty. Wrinkles added character, not age. The widow of a West Virginia State Police captain volunteered much of her time to animal welfare causes and her church’s mission work. As if having a full time job at the library and volunteer work was not enough, Doris also taught yoga and swam three miles, four times a week.
Damn, she’s beautiful when she’s cagey. Elliott shot her a wicked grin through the rearview mirror.
“Watch out!”
A red BMW SUV ran the stop light while he was turning left to take Millville Road along the Shenandoah River.
Elliott turned the steering wheel to the right. The rear wheels of his vehicle hit a sheet of ice. The BMW shot past Elliott’s SUV while it spun like a top. Doris threw herself on top of Sterling to prevent him from being thrown to the floor. The German shepherd yelped.
The BMW turned left and continued on its way to Charles Town.
Thanking God for his good reflexes, Elliott took a quick note of the BMW’s license plate. STARDUST
“What was that?” Doris stroked the top of Sterling’s head with trembling hands.
“Peyton Davenport,” Elliott said eased his vehicle out of the middle of the intersection.
She shook her head. “Someday that girl will end up dead from her reckless behavior. It isn’t her I feel sorry for as much as her father.”
“Why would you? He created that menace to society.”
“Mason Davenport met Peyton’s mother when she was his secretary at the racetrack. Everyone says it was love at first sight. They tried for years to have children and Julie became obsessed with having a baby. When she finally got pregnant, she spent the whole pregnancy in bed. After Peyton was born, Julie drove herself mad from fear of losing her and ended up throwing herself off the bedroom balcony.”
“Sounds like a Shakespearean tragedy,” Elliott said.
“Has all the earmarks. I hate to say it, but Peyton isn’t worth killing herself over. That girl is one evil little witch.”
“Tell me how you really feel about her.” Elliott laughed.
“Do you remember Colin Rodgers, the wide receiver for the WVU Mountaineers?”
Elliott nodded his head. “On his way to the pros until he died of a drug overdose.”
“Peyton Davenport and Colin Rodgers were hot and heavy,” Doris said. “She was at the Rose Bowl game when he won the team’s MVP. The lead detective in charge of the investigation told Kirk that the last phone call Colin had made was to Peyton Davenport and they spoke for quite a long time. The police did question her.”
“Was Colin Rodger’s death a suicide or accidental?”
“Not suicidal in the least,” Doris said. “He had a lot going for him. The suspicious thing is that according to his friends and family, Colin was not a heavy or habitual drug user. So the investigators wanted to talk to Peyton about that phone call, but they didn’t get very far before her daddy’s lawyer shut them down.”
“Steve Sinclair works hard to earn his monthly retainer.”
“Kirk used to call him Mr. Potter,” she said, “after the villain in It’s a Wonderful Life. Power hungry, arrogant, and void of human compassion. That’s Steve Sinclair.”
“His son, Victor is a sniveling worm. The only way he got nominated for county prosecutor was because everyone’s afraid of Steve. He’s the one pulling the strings behind the scenes in the prosecutor’s office.” Elliott turned onto the lane to lead them up to the Matheson farmhouse. He lowered his window and punched the security code into the keypad to open the gate.
Sterling sat up in the back seat. His eyes flicked back and forth while he took in everything.
“You’re almost home.” Doris stroked him down the length of his body.
On the way to the house, Nikki stopped in the middle of the driveway when she saw the SUV roll to a halt in front of the side porch. She let out a shout of delight when the German shepherd’s face came into view. “It’s a dog! Dad! Come see! He looks just like Winston!” She threw open the door and ran into the house.
“There goes any hope of him getting lost in the pack,” Elliott said.
Doris was climbing out when Nikki raced back outside, jumped from the top porch step down onto the ground, and ran up to the SUV.
Chris was close behind her. “Nikki, you don’t just grab dogs you don’t know. He’s probably scared. We know nothing about him. Mom, what have you done?”
“He looks just like Winston, Dad.” Nikki squeeze around Doris to touch the German shepherd. “Only his snout is black. Winston’s was gray because he was old.”
“Don’t you think we have enough dogs, Mom?”
“Easy, Nikki.” Doris fought to ease the girl’s enthusiasm. “He just got stitches removed from his chest.”
“What happened to him?” Nikki asked.
“He got shot,” Elliott turned to Chris. “Did you hear about that K-9 officer and his dog that got ambushed a little less than two weeks ago?”
“The same day that Winston died,” Doris said.
“Officer was sitting in his car at a red light,” Chris said. “Didn’t stand a chance.”
“Sterling was locked in his crate in the back,” Elliott said. “Took two bullets to the chest. Miracle he survived. Problem is, he can’t be crated anymore. He about ripped me apart when I tried to put him in the crate to bring him here.”
“If I took two bullets to the chest while locked up in a crate, I’d rip you apart, too, if you tried to put me back in it,” Chris said.
“Like mother, like son,” Elliott murmured.
“Vet says he’s claustrophobic,” Doris said. “They had to drug him to get him in the back seat.”
“He got booted from the police due to failing his psyche exam.” Nikki sat next to the do
g. “We’re keeping him, right, Dad? He needs us.”
Chris looked through the open door at where the German shepherd was resting his head in Nikki’s lap. His expression reminded him of Winston’s when he had said good-bye.
In silence, everyone waited for Chris’s response.
“Nikki, Winston’s bed is in the mud room,” Chris said. “Go set it up next to the fireplace.”
Announcing the new dog to anyone in hearing distance, Nikki ran into the house. Chris climbed into the back of the SUV and picked up the hundred-pound German shepherd into his arms. He carried him across the yard and inside.
“Told you he’d take him,” Doris said in a low voice.
“Sterling is easy. The book club is a whole ‘nother thing.”
“As soon as I break out my secret weapon, he’ll be riding back to the library with you.”
In the comfortable living room, Chris’s daughters surrounded Sterling, who laid across the worn dog bed. Each girl spoke in soothing tones to him while he took in his new home.
Thor jumped up onto the sofa and stood on the arm. Studying the newcomer, she twitched her nose.
“He’s bigger than Winston was,” Emma said. “Look at his paws.” She stroked one of his front feet.
Their heads cocked, Sadie and Mocha observed the intruder from across the room. Chris sat in the recliner between them and the German shepherd to jump in if need be, which was unlikely. Their extensive canine training had made them sociable to other animals.
He was more concerned with what Sterling would do when he noticed Thor. Surrounded by dogs her entire life, the rabbit was unaware she was a prey animal. She used to sleep curled up against Winston.
“So far, so good,” Chris said when Doris and Elliott entered the room after shedding their coats and boots. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Elliott said. “Sterling’s a good dog—a little goofy—”
“Goofy?” Chris asked. “How is he goofy?”
“I have no idea,” Elliott said. “My friend told me he’s downright eccentric—but he didn’t elaborate. To tell you the truth, I was too busy trying to stop him from eating my face to get all the details.”
